How to Split Time Across Phases on a Single Project
When one project has multiple phases, tracking hours in one bucket hides where the money actually went.
Most projects are not one thing. They are three or four things that share a name.
Discovery. Design. Build. Revisions. You quote them together, you invoice them together, and somewhere in the middle you lose track of which phase is eating the budget.
Splitting time by phase fixes that. Here is how to do it without overcomplicating your setup.
Why One Project Entry Is Not Enough
When you log everything under a single project, you get a total at the end. That total tells you if you made money. It does not tell you where you lost it.
Maybe your build phase ran clean. Maybe revisions doubled what you expected. You will never know if you treated the whole project as one time bucket.
Phase-level tracking gives you data you can actually use on the next quote.
Set Up Phases Before the First Timer Starts
In Time-Trak, create tasks inside your project that match your actual phases. Name them the way you think about them. Discovery. Kickoff. First Draft. Client Revisions. Final Delivery.
Do this before any work starts. If you set it up mid-project, your early hours are already mixed together and you will spend time trying to remember what you were doing on which day.
Five minutes of setup at the start saves a confusing audit at the end.
Match Your Phase Names to Your Proposal
Whatever phases you put in your proposal or statement of work, use the same names in your tracker. This matters for two reasons.
First, it makes client reporting clean. If you promised 10 hours of discovery and tracked 14, that shows up clearly and you can have a real conversation about it.
Second, it protects you. If a client later says a piece of work was not in scope, you have a log with timestamps and, if you use automatic screenshots, visual confirmation of what you were working on during that phase.
Track Phase Totals as You Go, Not Just at the End
Do not wait until the project closes to look at phase hours. Check them weekly.
If your discovery phase was scoped at 8 hours and you are at 6 hours with two days left, that is useful information. You can have a conversation with the client, adjust your pace, or flag that the scope is expanding before it gets out of hand.
By the time the project closes, it is too late to fix it. The only thing you can do then is write it off or accept the loss.
Use Phase Data to Build Better Quotes
This is the part most people skip. After a project closes, pull the phase breakdown and compare it to what you quoted.
Ask the same questions every time. Which phase went over? Which came in under? Was there a pattern across similar projects?
After three or four projects with phase tracking, you will stop guessing on quotes. You will have actual numbers to pull from.
That is how your rates get sharper over time instead of staying stuck at whatever you charged two years ago.
What to Do With Fixed-Fee Projects
Phase tracking matters even more on fixed-fee work. You are not billing by the hour, but you are still spending hours. If you do not track by phase, you cannot tell which phase ate your margin.
Log time the same way you would on an hourly project. You will not use it to invoice, but you will use it to understand whether the fee you charged actually covered the work you did.
That data feeds directly into your next fixed-fee quote for the same type of project.
One Final Thing
Phases do not have to be complicated. Even two categories, billable work and client communication, gives you more signal than a single project bucket.
Start simple. Add more phases when you know what questions you want to answer.
Track your time, bill every minute.
Time-Trak is a native Mac and Windows time tracker with a floating timer, automatic screenshots, and one-click invoicing.
Free during beta.
Download Time-Trak →macOS + Windows · Floating widget · Auto screenshots